In the current information age, mobile information technology (IT) tools are extensively used in order to provide processing and storage of various documents and data. In particular, mobile devices such as smartphones, mobile/cellular phones or handsets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet computing devices, personal, notebook or workstation computers, multi-function devices (MFDs), and so forth, allow users to perform numerous processing functions from almost any location.
There have been various attempts to connect and pair mobile devices in order to share information between the devices. One example is the Bump application, which detects device location and accelerometer action to allow two smartphone users to bump their phones together to share information between the phones. In the Bump application, Global Positioning System (GPS) components detect the proximity of the two devices to one another, and accelerometers within the devices detect the movement or ‘bump’ action of the devices touching one another, in order to thereby initiate the communication link between the bumped devices. As another example, there is the use of Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, which is a set of standards for establishing radio communication between smartphones by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters. Another example is the use of Bluetooth technology, which is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short wavelength radio transmissions) from fixed and mobile devices, thereby creating personal area networks.
However, both the NFC and the Bluetooth approaches require the installation of specialized hardware on the mobile devices to establish the communication links between the devices, and such specialized hardware is not universally available or accessible on all mobile devices. On the other hand, while the Bump application utilizes standard hardware such as accelerometers that are available on most mobile devices, the bump technique used with the Bump application requires specialized software to be installed on a mobile device. Further, the Bump application is not very accurate at detecting the bumping action between two mobile devices, especially in densely populated areas where a large number of mobile device users are in close proximity to each other.